Davis was born in Accomac, Virginia to a family with local religious and academic connections. He began teaching in the 1920s, receiving his master's degree from the University of Virginia in 1933 and his PhD in 1936. He joined the University of South Carolina as an associate professor of English in 1940, taking leave during the Second World War to teach for the United States Navy. Davis returned to South Carolina and then joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee. While there, he was involved with the James D. Hoskins Library and the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He was made an Alumni Distinguished Service Professor in 1962 and retired from teaching fifteen years later. During this time, he held several fellowships and was a member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Davis's most-celebrated work was his 1978 book Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585–1763, a three-volume study of the history and culture of the American South. According to Jack P. Greene, it was the "single most comprehensive description ever undertaken of the cultural life of any segment of Britain's early modern American empire".[1] Davis's reputation as a scholar was solidified through his extensive body of work, with Leo Lemay referring to him as "the greatest modern authority on early Southern literature".[2]: 173 Similar views were offered by Louis D. Rubin Jr., praising the way he "decisively chartered and explored the colonial southern literary scene".[3]: 11
Early life and education
Richard Beale Davis was born in Accomac, Virginia, on June 3, 1907. His mother was Margaret Josephine (née Wills), and his father was Henry Woodhouse Davis,[2]: 173 a Methodist minister across Virginia. He had two sisters, Virginia Holmes and Mary Eleanor. His paternal great-grandfather was Williams Thomas Davis, founding president of the Southern Female College in Petersburg, Virginia.[4]: 242–243 The family's papers are held by the library at the University of Virginia.[5]
Davis received his undergraduate degree from Randolph–Macon College in 1927.[2]: 173 His father had graduated from the same college in 1903.[4]: 243 In 1933, Davis received a master's degree from the University of Virginia, and in 1936 they awarded him a PhD.[2]: 173
On August 25, 1936, Davis married Lois Camp Bullard at his parents' house in Franklin, Virginia.[6][2]: 173
Academic career
Following his undergraduate degree, Davis taught at McGuire's University School in Richmond, Virginia until 1930.[2]: 173 In a review of a book about the school, Davis spoke briefly of his time teaching there.[7] From 1930 until 1932, he taught at Randolph-Macon Academy. Following his MA, he taught at the University of Virginia until 1936. He then taught for four years at the Fredericksburg Teachers College (known as Mary Washington College from 1938),[2]: 173 holding the position of associate professor of English.[8] In 1940, Davis joined the University of South Carolina as an associate professor in the English department.[2]: 173
In 1947, he joined the University of Tennessee. In 1962, he was made an Alumni Distinguished Service professor.[2]: 173–4 While there, he was heavily involved with the James D. Hoskins Library, working with the acquisitions department to identify possible purchases. From 1949 until 1971, he served as chairman of the library's Committee on Special Documents. He was also a member of the Faculty Library Committee from 1958 to 1970.[13]
Davis held various other positions during his time at the University of Tennessee, serving a year as a Fulbright professor at the University of Oslo in 1955 and another year as a US State Department lecturer in India in 1957.[13][2]: 174 In 1955, he was awarded a fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a Doctor of Letters by Randolph-Macon College.[2]: 173–4 In 1946, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for post-military service scholars.[14] He received a second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959.[15]
In 1977, Davis retired from teaching. He received a Festschrift upon his retirement, titled Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis.[2]: 175
Group memberships
Davis was associated with several historical and literature-focused groups, representing his academic interests and those further afield. In 1955, Davis was elected vice-president of the newly formed branch of the American Studies Association (ASA) for Kentucky and Tennessee.[16] In 1958, he was elected to the executive council of the nationwide ASA.[17] The same year, he served on the Regional Advisory Board for the Old Southwest Region of the Bibliographical Society of America.[18][19] In 1959, he was elected vice-chairman of the Southern Humanities Conference,[20] and served as its chairman in 1960.[21] In 1968, Davis began serving a two-year term on the executive council of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.[22] He was elected its first president in the same year.[23]
In 1972, Davis was made an honorary member of the Virginia Historical Society, having contributed to the group's journal for several years.[24] He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society the following year, later receiving a certificate from them upon his retirement from teaching.[2]: 175 He attended a single meeting of the elite group, in October 1974.[2]: 175 In 1975, Davis was a founding member of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society.[25] He had taught courses on Hawthorne since the 1940s.[26]
In 1965, Davis served as president for the University of Tennessee's new Phi Beta Kappa chapter, Epsilon of Tennessee.[27] He began writing for the society's magazine The Key Reporter in 1967, reviewing books in American culture and history.[28]
Modern Language Association
In 1952, Davis served as secretary of the American Literature section of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA).[29] The following year, he served as chairman of the section.[30] He served on the executive committee of SAMLA from 1963 until 1967, serving as vice-president in 1964 and president the following year.[31] During 1977, he served on its Fiftieth Anniversary Committee.[32]
Following the creation of the Modern Language Association's Early American Literature Group in the 1960s, Davis was elected to sit on its executive committee.[33] He later served as chairman of its nominating and advisory committee.[34]: 74 In 1977, the group named him as an Honored Scholar.[2]: 175
Davis served on the executive committee of the MLA-affiliated Center for Editions of American Authors.[35] He also served on the MLA's standing committee on copyright during the early 1970s.[36]
Writing career
In 1939, Davis published his first book, a biography titled Francis Walker Gilmer: Life and Learning in Jefferson's Virginia.[2]: 173 Gilmer, a lawyer, had been hired by Thomas Jefferson to secure European faculty members for the newly founded University of Virginia.[37]: 423 Davis had previously written a PhD thesis on Gilmer with the title "The Life, Letters, and Essays of Francis Walker Gilmer: A Study in Virginia Literary Culture in the First Quarter of the Nineteenth Century".[38] The book was praised by Dumas Malone for being "the fullest and best account" of his life.[39]: 617 G. Glenwood Clark praised its detailed index, but criticised the "gross carelessness in proof-reading, exasperating omission of words and phrases and frequent transpositions of whole sentences".[40]: 327 In 1946, Davis published a further work on Gilmer titled Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and Francis Walker Gilmer, 1814-1826. The work had been composed after the discovery of letters between the two men.[37]: 422 Dumas Malone noted the benefit of having both sides of correspondence published in one place and praised the book's focus on both men and Gilmer's "poignant human story".[39]: 616–618
In 1950, Davis worked with Fredson Bowers to edit a bibliography of the Elizabethan writer and traveller George Sandys.[41]: 106 He went on to publish a biography of Sandys in 1955, titled George Sandys, Poet-Adventurer: A Study in Anglo-American Culture in the Seventeenth Century.[2]: 174 Davis's reference works continued with the first published edition of Thomas Holley Chivers' Life of Poe (known as Chivers' Life of Poe) in 1952,[42] and a collection of historical writing by Augustus Foster in 1954.[43] In 1955, he published a monograph on José Correia da Serra.[2]: 174 Following its publication, he donated 128 items of research material to the library of the American Philosophical Society.[44]
Over the next few years, Davis edited several more reference works, including a monograph on colonial satire, a collection of poems by the clergyman Samuel Davies,[2]: 174 and a bibliography titled American Literature Through Bryant, 1585-1830.[41]: 106 He published three edited works in 1970: an edition of William Wirt's Letters of the British Spy, an edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish and a collection of Southern writing with C. Hugh Holman and Louis D. Rubin Jr.[41]: 106 In 1973, a selection of his articles and essays were published under the title Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608–1840.[2]: 174
Davis sat on the editorial board of the group publishing The Complete Works of Washington Irving.[47] The general editors of the group were Henry A. Pochmann, Herbert L. Kleinfeld and Richard D. Rust, and the books were published intermittently from 1969 until 1989.[48]: 338
Intellectual Life in the Colonial South
In 1978, Davis published Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585–1763, a three-volume study of the Southern United States, covering topics such as religion, politics, science and literature.[49] The research for the book took over two decades to complete.[50]: 248 In 1974, Davis was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for the project.[2]: 175
This ambitious and rewarding work rediscovers for modern Americans a vital regional culture, demonstrating the human richness of the Colonial South. The product of twenty-five years of exploration into neglected sources, this three-volume study will enlighten generations of readers. Not only does the book provide full information where little was previously available; it is also a work of high intellectual drama. This may be our most widely ranging inventory of a regional mind ever attempted in America. By reminding us of the validity and vitality of diverse American identities, it contributes to our understanding of ourselves. Good history must be interesting, it must be significant, and it must be true. The work of Richard Beale Davis shows all three of these qualities in abundance.[50]: 248
In 1979, his Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures were published under the title A Colonial Southern Bookshelf: Reading in the Eighteenth Century.[2]: 175
At the time of his death, Davis had been writing a book on "Intellectual Life in the Revolutionary South, 1763-1790".[2]: 175 He had received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for the project in 1979.[53] Davis had also been collaborating with Michael A. Lofaro and George M. Barringer on a bibliography of Southern manuscript sermons written before 1800.[54][2]: 175 Work on the project had begun in 1946 as part of the research for Intellectual Life in the Colonial South. In 2010, Lofaro published Southern Manuscript Sermons before 1800: A Bibliography, dedicating the work to Davis and noting him as one of four contributing editors.[55]
In 1981, the autumn edition of the Mississippi Quarterly journal was dedicated to Davis and the scholar C. Hugh Holman.[58] In 1986, J. Lasley Dameron and James W. Mathews edited a collection of essays dedicated to Davis, titled No Fairer Land: Studies in Southern Literature Before 1900.[59]: viii All the book's contributors, including its editors, had been taught by Davis.[60]: 174
In December 1983, the Modern Language Association began awarding the annual Richard Beale Davis Prize for the best article published within the journal Early American Literature.[61] Another award, the Richard Beale Davis Award for Distinguished Lifetime Service to Southern Letters, is awarded by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature every two years.[62]
Davis's papers are located in the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Tennessee.[63]
^"Notes and News". School and Society. 64 (1646): 25. July 13, 1946. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
^ abcdWright, Nathalia (September 1981). "Richard Beale Davis: A Tribute". The Library Development Program Report, 1980-81: 22. Retrieved September 14, 2023.